Russia funding resurgent Taliban

The Scotsman ^ | Sun 11 May 2003 | Ian Mather

[IoCaster]

Sun 11 May 2003

Russia funding resurgent Taliban

Ian Mather

RUSSIA is funding the Taliban's guerrilla war against the American-backed government of Afghanistan, leaders of the fundamentalist group have claimed.

In a move that carries echoes of attempts by the United States to undermine Soviet forces during their occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, Russian intelligence is now providing covert backing to a resurgent Taliban, senior figures in the extreme Islamic movement have alleged.

The alarming claim will prove acutely embarrassing to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been trying to rebuild relations with the US in the wake of the acrimonious split between the two countries over Iraq.

Engineer Hamidullah, the Taliban's former deputy chief of finance, says the Taliban now receive as much funding as they did when Osama bin Laden bank-rolled them before September 11.

"There are some countries that are against the policies of the US and the United Nations, and they support the guerrillas. The most important role belongs to Russia, Iran and Pakistan," he said.

In the 1980s, the CIA's funding of the Afghan Mujahedin on a massive scale wore down the Russians and eventually forced them to leave. The backing, both financial and military, was never admitted by the US.

According to Taliban sources in neighbouring Pakistan and Afghan intelligence sources, the group has a new hierarchy of leaders orchestrating opposition to the US-sponsored Afghan government of Hamed Karzai from Afghanistan and Pashtun tribal areas of north-west Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the Taliban has been mounting increasingly brazen attacks in Afghanistan. Last month its forces seized two remote districts near the Pakistan border and held them for nearly a week.

New-found confidence among the Taliban has led some of its leaders to speak publicly for the first time since the launch of the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom 18 months ago.

Abdul Salam - the former chief justice of the Taliban's Supreme Court - last week told the Christian Science Monitor newspaper that the Afghan people now want the Taliban back "because during the Taliban times, there was peace and security".

'The most important role belongs to Russia, Iran and Pakistan'

He was contemptuous of Karzai. Referring to the national council (loya jerga) that chose him, he pointed a finger to his head like a gun and said: "The last loya jirga was done by force. But if there was a real loya jirga, and the people who were appointed were good, then I would work with my head and feet and heart for my country."

Salam, who achieved notoriety in the days of Taliban rule by claiming that Afghanistan had the right to execute foreign aid workers who were trying to convert Afghans to Christianity, lives in his native Logar Province, near Kabul. He refuses to talk about his activities in the Taliban today, but admits that he maintains contact with the movement.

Commenting on the alleged backing of Russia, Pakistan and Iran, he said: "The Russians are not happy with the US presence here, and neither are Iran, Pakistan and even China."

Salam's interview followed a public claim by another Taliban leader, Mullah Dadullah, that the Taliban had regrouped under the leadership of Mullah Omar, their one-eyed spiritual leader, who is still being hunted by the Americans. Dadullah claimed personal credit for a number of the recent Taliban attacks on coalition forces, and said that the Taliban would fight until "Jews and Christians, all foreign crusaders" were expelled from Afghanistan.

He added that the Taliban were also receiving money from the Afghan people.

A third senior Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Hasan Rehmani, former governor of Kandahar, has also re-emerged to renew calls for a "holy war" against the Americans and their allies.

Speaking to a journalist over a satellite phone, something no Taliban leader would have dared to do previously for fear of being tracked by American satellites, he described Karzai as "an American clerk and a toy in the hands of the Northern Alliance", which dominates the present Afghan government.

Despite the massive technological superiority of their forces in Afghanistan and the millions of dollars offered as rewards, the Americans have not managed to catch or kill any of the Taliban's top leadership.

The fact that many of the names in the new leadership structure are well known from the former regime undermines last week's announcement by US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld that major combat operations in Afghanistan are at an end.

Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan at New York University, said:

"They [the Taliban] are now organising for a new offensive and they are still getting some support from Pakistan. Even if Pakistan is not cooperating directly, it is not cooperating in efforts to end the support that is coming from Pakistani territory."

Shahzada Zulfikar, a Quetta-based political analyst, said Taliban commanders continue to receive support from Pakistan's powerful and secretive intelligence agencies, as they did openly during the time of the Taliban government.

"Pakistan ditched the Taliban due to American pressure, for a while, but now there are fears that their relationship might be restored."

While Pakistan still provides a safe haven for the anti-government Afghan fighters as it did when the Mujahedin were fighting the Russians, there is now a new twist to the Great Game. The Russians, it appears, are on the same side, not on the receiving end.

No one was available for comment at the Russian embassy in London last night.

CHAIN OF COMMAND

AT THE top of the Taliban's new military command structure is Mullah Beradar, a native of the home village of the infamous Mullah Omar.

Beradar has been hunted relentlessly by the Americans, and at various times has been reported injured or dead.

Under Mullah Beradar are Taliban commanders and religious leaders assigned to different territories. The most active region, from Nimroz Province to Helmand, Kandahar, Zabul, and north to Urozgan, is under the joint control of Beradar's top three deputies.

The first, Akhtar Usmani, former Taliban corps commander in Kandahar, is also a close companion of Omar. Both men taught in the same madrassa (religious school). Omar is said to have named Usmani as his successor in case of his death after he went into hiding from the Americans in November 2001.

Second is Mullah Abdur Razzaq, a founding member of the Taliban, who rose to head of the customs department and then interior minister.

According to Ahmed Rashid's book Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia, Razzaq admitted having given the order to kill General Mohammed Najibullah, the pro-Soviet president, who was executed when the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996.

The third man, Mullah Dadullah, was military chief in Kunduz on the front lines against the Northern Alliance, and negotiated its surrender. In his former role he notoriously presided over public hangings from cranes.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for all the links!

[Consort]

M. Dadullah Oblongata is the brains behind the operation.

[Just mythoughts]

They sure haven't been very nice now have they, we have paid triple the value of that land and many of our own gave their life to keep that backslider out of trouble.

[AdmSmith]

M. Dadullah Oblongata is the brains behind the operation.

Yes, and corp. C allosumh is in charge of communications.

[AmericanVictory]

Very high. Russia thinks that we will be as dependent upon their oil as we have been upon that of the Saudis and that they, therefore, can play the same double game. Once again we see the folly of failing to rationally seek hydrocarbon independence and ultimately practical freedom from hydrocarbon dependence even domestically.

[rvoitier]

I thought that way when Pooty-Poot visited Crawford, Tx. (last year?). But not what Iraq's oil will be up and running in about a year, the US's dependence on OPEC oil will be greatly diminished. Granted, Iraq is in OPEC, they will be a breaker to their monopolistic price fixes.
The US's #1 importer for oil is Canada. The Russians have screwed their themselves out of contention for the US's business in the near future with what we're now learning vis-a-vis their Sadaam ties.
When the time comes, America will handle its energy needs without having to bow to environmentalists' screw job of wreckikng our economy with unfair and imbalanced demands on the US and no one else.

[Brian Allen]

For more than seventy years definitively-hesperophobic,"Russia" will never forgive Our Beloved FRaternal Republic for seeing to Moscow's Evil Empire's humiliation in Afghanistan. And for having so comprehensively compounded that already-abject humiliation.

In Afghanistan.

[Long before we took Iraq in 44 days -- and began allowing the evidence of Russia's long-established complicity there with Saddam's murderers to Chinese-water-torture-like leak out and to even further compound Russia's humiliation. (Aside) PUTIN! Pay attention! Do you get it yet? Be with US -- or BE the enemy]

Least we forget, originally-tiny "Russia" is still close to being the world's most authoritarian colonial empire.

[On Russia's scale -- of both recent brutality and size -- only its ideological twin, the authoritarian colonial empire brutally and murderously under the boot of the Peking-based pack of psychopathological, invading, conquering, enslaving, mass-murdering, lying, looting, thieving, wannabe-mandarin, gangster bastards that so grandiosely calls itself "china," outstrips it] And "Russia" is still pretty much comprised of the same medievally-minded, [Politically] endemically-alcoholic and otherwise drug-resistant-diseased, mindlessly-criminalized and almost to an man as-mindlessly hesperophobic people as were the Soviet's Evil Empire's slaves -- who are run by the same every-bit-as hesperophobic gangsters-posing-as-politicians, including, so far, the drunkard, Yeltsin.

And the KGB's Putin.

There is great hope that a newly "New" European-ized Russia will shed its brutally aquired and brutally held on to colonial Asian empire and reemerge to stand beside its willing American ally and to retake its place in Chrissendom -- and it has shown movement in that direction.

But it's not there yet.

Not by decades.

[Bonaparte]

If this is true, it proves the Russians just never ever learn.

[RusIvan]

If this is true, it proves the Russians just never ever learn.+++

But if it is not what it proves? I'd say that some freepers never learn likably eating up any stupidity they feed.

[A. Pole]

If this is true, it proves the Russians just never ever learn.

I doubt that it is true. Taliban was the most enthusiastic supporter of militant Islamists in Chechnya while Russia was the supporter of Northern Alliance - the mortal foe of Taliban.

[Just mythoughts]

"Russia thinks that we will be as dependent upon their oil"

Wonder where they got that idea?

Remember BJClinton telling the world there should be a "set" price for a barrel of oil. I think he said at least "25" dollars, well he wasn't just talking about American oil he was talking about Russian oil, (Iraq and Saudi) control of the world's oil.

Finding out now that the UN was ripping off the Iraqi oil under that "Oil for Food Program which Clinton himself wanted to continue cannot be left out of the story.

While much evidence is obvious to the acts of Russia, France, Germany and China, lets not forget our very own socialist/liberal/communist who we elected for two terms who was a fellow traveler with this bunch.

One could only imagine what things would be like today under an algore presidency and the former co-partner president running the Senate.

Bill and Hillary want their power back and will do whatever they can get away with to get it back, they don't give one wit about this nation's status or security, it is their "STAGE".

"Hydrocarbon independence" is but one part of the picture, a tool like high taxation to control the economy, under a political leadership like the UN, using institutions of education and religion to bring humanity into agreement of a so-called "world peace".

[Just mythoughts]

HELP - please explain this word "hesperophobic".

Well one could use Korea and Vietnam as prior abject humiliation done by the "Evil Empire" to US, and Ronald Reagan knew the evil of communistic ideology, and thus the abject humiliation served up in Afghanistan could be said, reaping what one has sown.

However, few Americans are aware of it being the "Evil Empire" who directed and paid for that bit of abject humiliation (Korea and Vietnam and China's willing help) upon US.

What confidence (secret deals) our own loathing of our military, two term socialist gave to these "authoritarian colonial empires", they had a done deal and President Bush made them null and void.

If there is a connection of Russia and the Taliban and we find Saddam was a part of that same connection what did Russia know about 9/11? Someone we were told prior to 9/11 was making money in the market selling stocks/ hedging/selling short airline stocks, WHO WAS THAT?

[Beck_isright]

If true, where do I send my check to the Chechens?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for sharing that analysis! Hugs!

[Destro]

Given our track record I am suprised that some Talibani are not working for us! We funded the jihads not Russia and in addition the Russians and the Northern Front are tight - the Northern Alliance has been with Russia since the Russian forces left Afghanistan - and fought the war with proxies.

The Northern Alliance has also been supported by India, China and Iran (Iran because some in the Northern alliance are Shia and etnic Iranian) and thus this charge by the Talibani Mullah is laughable. Even more laughable you can buy into it.

[A. Pole]

If true, where do I send my check to the Chechens?

I guess the nearest office of Taliban can handle it for you.

[Beck_isright]

LOL, good point. The Russians are screwing themselves if this story is true!

[Bonaparte]

Yes, I agree. Until a report is confirmed by credible sources and evidence, it should not be taken as the truth.

Nice to hear from you, RI.

[Brian Allen]

Hesperophobia:

This word was coined by the political scientist Robert Conquest. Its roots are the Greek words ????????, [Hesperos] which means ?the west? and ????? (phobos), which means ?fear,? but which when used as an English suffix can also carry the meaning ?hate?.

Hesperophobia is fear or hatred of the West.

Check John Derbyshire's book review at:
http://olimu.com/WebJournalism/Texts/Commentary/Hesperophobia.htm

I lifted John's definition from their -- and can vouch for the truth of what he writes.

I live it every day.

Best ones -- B A

[Just mythoughts]

Thanks for the explanation, makes sense never heard it used in this manner describing Russia. Not doubting the word or orgin just trying to understand the word in the context used.